At the Hour of Our Deaths
by Potter47
Summary: Hermione has been acting strange lately. Written for the Sink into Your Eyes Summer 2005 Challenge.


At the Hour of Our Deaths  
_Potter47 _

Hermione had been acting strange lately.

We could all see it. I didn't... I didn't know _why _she was acting strange, of course, because then I would have done something, I would have told Dumbledore, anyone—but none of us knew.

I wish I'd known.

We were at the library, that day, and... like I said, Hermione had been acting strange. That day, for some reason it seemed to me that _I _was the one reading and looking stuff up in those old books, and that Hermione wasn't doing anything at all—it was this strange feeling when I was looking down at the page, I felt that her gaze was on me, but when I looked up she _was _reading, and I didn't understand it but I didn't like it and I kept on reading.

I couldn't concentrate, after a while. I just... I kept reading the same words over and over and over and over and over. I wasn't getting anything done, I wasn't doing anything that would help with anything, and I certainly wasn't revising for our exams.

I wondered when Ron and Ginny would get there. They'd said they would meet us, you see, and that had been hours ago—of course, neither of them were really all that interested in revising, so they'd probably just decided to put it off as long as they could, but sitting there alone (it seemed like I was alone, at least) I wished they were there, or that I was with them, or that maybe we were all out flying. That would have been good.

Hermione had been silent the whole time, practically, which wasn't really strange when she was reading or doing work, but since it didn't seem like she was doing either, it _was _weird. And then, she spoke:

"How about we do something else for a while?" she said, closing the book in front of her with a loud noise. She spoke quietly, perhaps because we were in the library. "Go for a walk, or something?"

This sounded weird to me, since it was Hermione, but I didn't really care.

"Sure," I said. "Let's—let's go."

And we went, gathering up our things and leaving the library behind. From what she'd said, I'd figured Hermione just wanted to do _something_ out of the library, anything at all to stretch her legs, but now, as we walked through the corridors, it seemed she had a clear destination.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see," she said in that same quiet voice, even though we weren't in the library anymore.

Through the corridors, one after another, she led me, and she was again silent.

"Hey," I said, then, "how'll Ron and Ginny find us? We were supposed to meet in the library—"

"Oh, forget about _them _for a while," said Hermione and that was when I knew something was _definitely _strange about her today, because Hermione seemed as though she were attempting a horrible impersonation of herself, which didn't make any sense.

We walked and walked and then we stopped because we had arrived at the place she had in mind, and I was baffled when I saw that it was just an old, dirty, disused classroom.

"Hermione, what—"

"Shh," she said, and pulled me inside, shutting the door carefully behind us. She was moving with an odd grace about her, slowly and stealthily like Snape, perhaps, and it was very strange, like everything else about her that day.

In the middle of the room stood a tall, tall mirror—or was it a mirror?—and I was instantly reminded of the Mirror of Erised, back in first year, but this wasn't that at all, this was something completely different.

Hermione pulled me by the arm to this strange looking-glass, and she stopped me just in the centre, so I could look without disruption.

"Tell me what you see," she said in that strange soft voice—

I really hate to do this, but I have to stop for a minute, although I know this is a horrible place for it. I have to say something:

I should have suspected something was funny with her. I _really _should have. If it had been, perhaps, _anyone _else, I _would _have suspected, but as it was Hermione I must have... I must have just reasoned it off as one of her strange ideas, like me and Ron always did when she went running off to the library or the Owlery or someplace else. So I didn't suspect anything.

I also have to stop a minute to explain what was going on with Ron and Ginny, because I had been wrong about them simply slacking off before—at least not the whole time—I learned all this after the fact, of course.

Apparently, Luna Lovegood had been knocking loudly on the Fat Lady's portrait when Ron and Ginny were in the common room—much to the occupant's disliking—and when they had met her outside, she had been frantic.

"Ronald, Ginny, there's a—there's a demon in the castle!" Luna had shouted, practically throwing herself at, er, 'Ronald' as soon as he emerged into the corridor.

Naturally, they didn't take her seriously at first—Luna said these sorts of things all the time, you know, although never with such an air of panic. (In fact, the more alarming her claims, the more calm Luna usually acted.) Something was different now, of course, and it took Ron and Ginny off-guard to say the least.

They tried to comfort her—well, Ginny did, while Ron stood awkwardly in Luna's trembling arms—but she would take no consoling. She demanded that they follow her to where the demon had got in, and help her try to catch it—

"—or else," Luna explained, "all of us will be doomed."

They went on with her, and she led them to the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor. This alarmed Ron horribly, of course, because that _was _a secret passageway into the school, of course, and one that Luna knew nothing about. How could she have made it up, then?

Anyway, it set Ron on alert, and the three of them kept their wands ready from that point on. Ginny reckoned it'd be best to warn Hermione and I, and then to get Dumbledore, so they headed off to the library, to find us, but we had already left.

They headed, worried, back up to Gryffindor Tower, and Luna came inside even though she wasn't supposed to—Ron went up to the dorm to get the Map, to find us, and after a while they did, they spotted us walking to the classroom with the mirror. And so they set out to find us.

I'm sure you'll want to know about the mirror now. I'll recap a bit:

Hermione had said, "Tell me what you see," in that newfound voice of hers, and I looked into that mirror and I saw something I had never, ever hoped to see—of course I hadn't—it was, I thought, perhaps the last thing I ever wanted to happen.

Ginny was there, I saw—so was Ron, and Hermione herself, but I noticed Ginny first for some reason. Their hands were bound, and they were on their knees and—my eyes widened—Voldemort was there as well, though of course he wasn't on the ground.

He stood above the others—and it wasn't just the three now, there were more, many more; Neville and Luna and Mrs Weasley and McGonagall and Dumbledore—with his wand out and he paced among the bound numbers, smirking. Then:

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

I couldn't hear the words, of course, as I was watching this in the mirror, but I could see the green light shoot forth from his wand, and I could see it strike someone down—it was _Ginny_, and—

—and then he killed another, and another, and I wanted nothing but to _look away_, but I couldn't, I couldn't rend my gaze from that mirror.

But then, Voldemort was gone, replaced by me, standing amongst all those people, some alive yet even more dead, and I tried to help them, but I couldn't, because I was killing them. And then _they _were standing above _me_, and they had their wands out and I was bound and they killed me and I could look away.

"What did you see?" said Hermione, and there was this strange _glint _in her face, or maybe just her eyes, and I told her, and she seemed almost _happy,_ which I didn't understand at _all_.

"Do you want to know what I see?" said Hermione then, but before she could say anything more, a sound sounded behind us, and I turned my head round and the door had been flung open—almost like in fourth year, when Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape found me in the imposter-Moody's office—and there stood Ron, Ginny, and Luna, staring not at me, not at Hermione, but at the mirror.

They were breathless, I saw, completely transfixed by the sight. Luna's mouth had fallen open in horror, and I swear I heard her say "_Mum_" in a very soft voice, but she wouldn't mention it later.

Ron and Ginny also stared, but it seemed as though _they _saw the same thing as each other, something quite different from Luna or myself.

"What are you _doing?_" Ron exclaimed, then, and his face contorted. Ginny seemed almost crying, hypnotised by the mirror. Her lip trembled and she seemed to be trying to say something, _anything_, but she couldn't manage it.

Hermione looked exhilarated where the others were terrified, and she walked over to the three of them, and she said, "What do you see?"

But they couldn't answer, or perhaps wouldn't, and then Luna seemed to wake from her trance:

"There's a demon in the castle," she informed Hermione quietly—who smirked a horrible, terrible smirk.

And that smirk finally connected, in my mind, all those times I'd thought Hermione had been acting strange, and how she hadn't been acting like herself, and then I realised that _she wasn't herself,_ not really.

"_Finite Incantatum!_"

Hermione's eyes glazed, or perhaps _de_glazed, and she collapsed upon the floor. The sight of her falling form finally brought Ron and Ginny's gazes away from the mirror. They looked down at her, but still didn't speak.

"Are you all right?" I said, breathing heavily. _What had just happened? _The three others had fallen to the floor as well, but more out of relief than anything else.

Ginny nodded, but Ron simply stared at Hermione on the floor, and shuffled closer to her. Then he spoke:

"What—what happened to her?"

"I reckon it was...Imperius," I said—it couldn't have been Polyjuice, of course, because he'd been with her far longer than an hour, and she didn't carry a flask.

Ron asked:

"What's that mirror?"

He quite pointedly didn't look anywhere near it.

"I—I think it shows—" I began. Luna interrupted:

"It must show what you don't want to see," she said, and I noticed that she was quite calm now. "What you _really _don't want to see." She shivered.

Ginny nodded, and said in a rather hollow voice, "That makes sense."

"What did you see?" I asked them, Ron and Ginny. Ron looked to Ginny to answer, and then back at Hermione.

"Oh, of course, _I _have to explain it," Ginny muttered, looking at her lap. Then she said quietly, "You and Hermione. You were... you were standing there, in the mirror, and you threw—you threw _knives _at us, and we died."

I blinked. _What was with all the death in the room?_

"Is she going to be all right?" Ron asked then, gesturing to Hermione, but he needn't have worried, as just when he said it, her eyes blinked open, and she sat bolt upright.

"She—she—we've got to tell one of the professors—" Hermione said, and struggled to her feet, but Ron and I each caught a side of her, and put her back down to sit, to calm down.

"What happened?" I said, and it was good to see Hermione behind Hermione's face.

"Lestrange! Bellatrix Lestrange, she was—she _cursed me,_ and I—"

"It's all right," said Ginny. "You're all right—"

"But she might still be in the castle!" said Hermione, and she got out of Ron and my hands and ran full tilt from the room.

Ron ran after her, and Luna stood and followed Ron rather calmly.

Ginny and I were alone.

"Are you really all right?" I asked, and Ginny smiled rather grimly—she was the only one that hadn't moved an inch since falling to the floor, and—and I noticed right then that she was looking into the mirror again.

"No, don't—" I said, and I tried to get in the way, to block Ginny's gaze, but she looked away by herself somehow, before I got the chance.

Then there was silence for a long while—just when it reached fever pitch, Ginny broke it.

"I didn't tell you everything, you know," said Ginny. Somehow I'd known she was going to.

"You see, you were—well, you were _snogging_," she said rather frankly. "But that's not—" She looked as though it were difficult to find the words, and she spoke in a tighter voice: "You weren't _just _snogging, you were—you were snogging _each other_."

I'd figured that was what she meant, but Ginny clearly felt the distinction necessary.

"And then," Ginny said, "—and Ron saw it too—you looked right at us when you threw the knives, and they hit us right in the hearts—yours in mine, Hermione's in Ron's—and you didn't just kill us, we _bled _to death and you laughed and snogged some more while we did it."

More silence.

"That wasn't very nice of us," I said, and she smirked, and yet _more_ silence ensued. It was unbearable.

"You know what it means, right?" she said then. "It's not really all that subtle—"

"Yeah, I think I get it," I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

"So what did _you_ see?"

And I said the words that seemed almost inevitable, almost like some sort of joke between us rather than the serious-sounding words they were:

"You," I said. "You died."

She smiled, and said:

"We have such bad luck in mirrors."

"Yeah."

Silence, and then:

"Care to try for real?"

I'd been hoping she'd say that.

_

Finis

_


End file.
